More brief notes on interesting items gleaned from Letters to Family…

* Lovecraft’s experience of New York City subway travel was likely not the same in 1922 as in 1924-26, due the carriage types. He appears to have been at the cusp of a changeover in the types, from old to modern. In 1922 he remarks on the very old hand-crafted and very large carriages. He preferred travelling on the largest and most palatial of these, and went out of his way to do so.

* Providence had good strong street-lighting at night by 1922, not always the case in comparable provincial cities. Relevant to the inclination to take Providence night-walks, with Eddy and alone.

* In spring 1924 Lovecraft researched and wrote three chapters of a book on “American superstitions”. This was prior to his work for Houdini, and his own Supernatural Literature. There is no footnote detailing the fate of this text, though possibly I’ll encounter more details on later pages. I’d suspect it was later rolled into the Houdini work.